Over the next year, a seven-acre patch of land along the French Broad River in Asheville will be transformed into a major new entertainment, recreation, food and beer hub.

Plans call for a 2,500-person capacity outdoor music venue, a smaller indoor music hall and bar, and a “soul-Americana” restaurant. The sprawling grounds at 665 Riverside Drive will also feature three different river access points and an array of outdoor leisure sport opportunities. Developers are including a parking lot that can handle 400 to 450 cars.

The music venue and special event portion of the property, called the Salvage Station, will hold a soft opening Saturday, Sept. 20, hosting the official Zombie Float after-party, a benefit for the Western North Carolina Alliance. Although a permanent stage isn’t scheduled to be completed until next spring, Salvage Station will likely host a few more “big public events” through the end of the year using temporary staging, says McClinton. When complete, the outdoor venue will include a series of platforms and benches to “amphitheater it out,” he says.

Salvage Station is just the latest big-time development in the area. Here’s a quick look at a few other significant developments underway, and all are within about a 2- or 3-mile radius of Salvage Station:

-New Belgium Brewing’s new East Coast brewery: New Belgium’s new $175 million brewery is under construction on Craven Street. They expect to be making beer there at some point in 2015.

-RAD Lofts: A new mixed-use development by developer Harry Pilos at the corner of Clingman Avenue and Roberts Street will include 209 residential units, a parking deck, a sushi restaurant, tattoo parlour, restaurant and more. Construction has not started yet.

The Asheville nonprofit Food Connection is partnering with Wicked Weed Brewing and its Cultura restaurant, the YMCA of Western North Carolina, and Red Wing Enterprises for the event aimed at helping service industry workers.

One of the biggest immediate impacts has been the release of about 200 people from the Buncombe County jail, a long-sought after goal by some local officials who want to convert the county jail from a holding pen for low-level, nonviolent, poor suspects to a lockup reserved for serious offenders.

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Some kind of reference points are always useful in articles like this, so we don’t have to hit up Google Maps in order to figure out the location. For anyone who is wondering, this is the property just north of the Southern States property, right where near where the ramps from Future 26 hit Riverside.